The Competition’s Heating Up Among Cloud Vendors

It seems like the Cloud Computing market is coming out with something new every day. As a result, I’ve put together this roundup of recent cloud announcements to sort out the competition that’s heating up among the various vendors.

Rackspace

Last week, Rackspace launched their Cloud Tools Marketplace which allows their customers to find third party SaaS apps built on or for the Rackspace Cloud offering.

Rackspace says its Cloud Tools Marketplace is powered by a platform built by AppDirect. In addition to solutions built for the Rackspace cloud platform, the Cloud Tools Marketplace may be a place that cloud developers can link up with enterprises that are in need of help building or deploying their own cloud solutions.

Google

Google recently launched its Google Cloud Partner program designed for technology and service partners. It appears Google may be relying on partners as a means to reach the cloud computing market place with pre-built solutions, as well as professional services.

While you’re in the area, dig into Google App Engine and check out some of the cool features, such as, the Search API. The Search API allows Python and Java developers to build search indexing into their content, which is similar to how search is used at google.com.

Microsoft’s Azure

Some mailing lists trickle out news on a monthly basis. Azure’s mailing list is like drinking water from a fire hose. Microsoft seems to be pushing hard on Azure these days and it’s beginning to show results. I’ve always thought that Azure and Amazon had the best object storage platform, but Google is now in the mix.

With Azure launching IaaS this summer and so many people taking advantage of their aggressive pricing on storage, the platform appears to be taking hold (specifically with Windows shops). If you’re a .NET developer, then get a free account and begin developing a solid understanding of Azure – then again, if you’re good, you already have.

Amazon

In another sign the market is really heating up, Amazon is lowering pricing and expanding services this summer. It’s attempting to make it harder for new entries into the Cloud Computing market by lowering the profit margin that infrastructure companies can expect.

Just recently, I asked a large telecom cloud program manager why they were offering storage at $.X/GB – was their storage so different to justify an expensive price? The manager’s reply was, “it’s about the same as the competition.” But when I told this individual about Amazon’s new pricing structure, the response was, “you have to be kidding!”